SHIPPING 10 points in the first 10 minutes against French outfit Brive was “criminal” for Worcester Warriors in their European Challenge Cup loss, conceded backs coach Sam Vesty.

Warriors “struggled to live” with Brive’s physicality in the early stages and eventually suffered a 25-24 defeat at Sixways.

A soft converted try from wing Taku Ngwenya and Thomas Laranjeira’s penalty allowed the French club into an early 10-0 lead which, according to Vesty, was costly.

Vesty said: “It was frustrating to give them a 10-point lead. If you give a team like Brive a 10-point lead, you make life hard for yourselves.

“They were a big, physical team and they brought that for the first 10 minutes and we struggled to live with it.

“The boys did extremely well to work out where we were strong and they kept the ball on the field and ran around to try to tire out Brive’s bigger boys.

“But to concede 10 points in those first 10 minutes was criminal and down to very soft defence.”

Warriors hit back from the early deficit and looked in a strong position when they opened up a 17-10 lead with just 23 minutes remaining in the Pool Three fixture.

However, Warriors made a hash of the restart which led to a Brive try and the visitors regained the lead soon afterwards with a penalty from Nicolas Bezy.

A converted try from Thomas Acquier put Brive into a 25-17 advantage before Warriors hit back with a last-gasp try from wing Andy Short, converted by Jamie Shillcock.

Vesty said: “Our breakdown attack was poor and it really showed as a weakness of ours.

“We had all the possession and played the better rugby but six or seven times we took the ball in and they came away with it from a breakdown.

"That was just too many times. You are going to lose games if you don’t look after your own ball.”

Despite the disappointing result, Vesty was delighted with the performances of the returning Chris Pennell and some of Warriors’ young stars.

“I was happy to see Jack Singleton come on and have a good game and Andrew Kitchener fronted well in the second row and was really physical,” said Vesty.

“Luke Baldwin played well and kept the tempo high, which is what we had asked him to do.

“After Tommy Heathcote went off, I thought Shilly came on and moved the ball quite nicely and gave us some opportunities to score.”

Vesty added: “Shorty was good and did some really good things and I was chuffed he got over at the end for a try.”